Web APIs

As it was mentioned in one of my previous blogs, I will be implementing different APIs in the website. I have explored and tested different APIs that might be a goood use for some of my websites needs.

Weather API 

OpenWeatherMap APIs is a very practical API. During my testing, not only it provided me with what I need (weather forecast at a particular city), it also provided me with more data such as city name, location coordinates and time. It works totally as expected, so it seems very reliable.

However, I have to use Google Maps API to get current location coordinates so I can pass them to the weather API. I did test it, and it works fine.

Radio API 

I initially wanted to be able to access radio stations at every county in order to get one of their channels. Nevertheless, I spent a big deal of time investigating on the best radio APIs that can deliver such service, and in fact I couldn't find any. Most of the APIs I found such as LastFM and Shoutcast only provide data about tracks playing.  I tried then finding an API that would return an audio playback when passed with details about it, however it was a dead end. 

Therefore, I determined that I have to choose something different but still audio related. I did some researching, and I eventually found something interesting that brings me to my next point.

Text-To-Speech API 

Yes, this kind of APIs converts text to speech, and the best one I have found so far is ResponsiveVoice API. What it does is that it gets text input from the user, then it reads it. How I'm intending to use this in my project is via passing it different kinds of texts which it will read them to the viewers. Another thing is fascinating about this API is that it gives the option to choose between a set of 20 languages, which means that I can request it to read a text in different languages. Because of that, I'll be using another Google API called Google Cloud Translate API that will be helping to first translate an English to text to any other languages, which will be later passed to ResponsiveVoice.

I have tested ResponsiveVoice in my website, and it works very well. Although, I still haven't tested Google Cloud Translate, which I'm hoping will not be challenging.

Here is a diagram explaining how these APIs are using each other.

APIs usage